You don’t have to be a genius to come up with a business idea. It’s the exact opposite! It’s really simple to come up with business ideas all the time, however, the challenge lies in coming up with a business idea that works for you and suits your personality and needs.

This is where most people get stuck, many people want to start their own and think about it all the time, the big question is, what business should I start? And it is not a small question, often, the kind of business you are in will dictate whether you will be successful or not.

So, if you have some sort of framework or directions to get your mind focused on business ideas that will suit you and work with your own situation, then you’ve taken a big step toward becoming successful in business.

1. Start thinking! Get your brain to work
Whether you’re too busy with your daily routines to take the time to think and reflect on what you want, or feel that your brain is too pressured and lacking the ability to run wild with your imagination, worry not. This article has tips and advice that will help you get started with the creative process.

The first step towards creative thinking is understating how the mind works and how to stimulate your brain. I will dig deep into this topic, because we might need several book to cover it, but I will briefly mention the key elements.

The brain has two main parts; the right and the left hemispheres, each of these have different functions and work differently. The right hemisphere is creative and artistic part, it’s the part that appreciates art, it uses shapes, colors and images to analyze and process information, and it’s also the part that controls creativity and the imagination.

The left part is the logical part, it’s the part that performs mathematical calculations, looks for causes and effects, uses words to describe and define, and it’s also the part that controls speech, grammar and word order.

For you to be successful in business, you have to have a balance on both sides. You have to be imaginative and creative to come up with business ideas and to come up with creative solutions for business problems. You also have to be logical to analyze and define business opportunities, calculate business risks and weigh your options to deal with the daily business issues.

The brain is like a muscle, if you don’t exercise it regularly to get it in shape. You can’t prepare for a marathon by sitting on the couch all day. Common barriers to creative thinking are habits, attitudes, daily routines, lack of confidence or the constant need for guidance from others. A good way to break or overcome those barriers is to be open minded, be receptive to new things, take new challenges, or by simply giving your brain the green light to think creatively. So take the time to think and get your brain stimulated.

Change is one of the best ways to stimulate your brain and discover new ideas. A change of scenery can help you clear your mind off your daily issues and give you some clarity to start thinking creatively, you can go to a garden, beach or anywhere you like and take the time to exercise your brain. A change of people will also help you, by meeting new people and listening to them talking about their issues or frustrations, you can gain a better insight into their needs and aspirations, which is the basis of any successful business. A change of place will also definitely help you discover new ideas you have not seen or heard of before, you might see a new type of store in your trip to Tokyo that you think will work well in your city.

Bottom line is, you don’t need to go to the other side of the globe to find new ideas, the small changes that you make in your daily, will pay in a big way.

2. Buy a notebook
Now that you know how to stimulate your brain and get started with the creative thinking process, you need to keep count on your ideas and make sure that you can document them to study and examine them further.

Every business you can think of started with a small idea somewhere, from a small observations, a frustrating situation, or while taking a shower. The difference is that those people who had those ideas took the time to think about these ideas and improve on them to create successful businesses. You never know when the inspiration comes, so keep a notebook close to you at all times to write these ideas down whenever they come.

3. Follow your passion
Once you start your business, you will spend most of your day for several years doing that business. So make sure you chose a business that you feel passionate and excited about. If you don’t like the business you are, chances are, you might not succeed in that business, probably not because you don’t have what it takes, but mostly because you might lose interest too easily in the face of the challenges that will come your way.

Starting and building a successful business is no small task, it will be a lot of work, you will face many problems, you will have to deal with situations you never encountered before, so it better be something you love doing. You will find that when things go tough, it is your passion that will get you going and make you overcome the hurdles. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you will take the first exit when problems arise.

Additionally, if you do something you love personally and understand its motivations, you will be in a better place to understand your customer needs and deliver on them. Understanding customer needs and their motivations to buy is a key element of understanding your business and ensuring its success.

Having that said, when you decide to take an old hobby into a new business, you have to work out the calculations and make sure that there is enough demand for this product or service, and that people are willing to pay for it. Otherwise, you will end up doing something not many people are interested in.

4. Keep your eyes open
New business opportunities get born from new situations every day. Keep an eye on what is happening around you, make it a habit to read the newspaper and identify new opportunities. You may read that people are complaining from poor health services in your area, or the lack of schools in your neighborhood.

Talk to your neighbors and the people you know, what is frustrating them? What would they want to change in your neighborhood? Is your neighbor complaining that she needs to drive long distances to get to the nearest dry cleaner? Or is your other neighbor complaining about the lack of groceries in close proximities to where you live? Are you coworkers frustrated that there are no restaurants close to your work building?

If you keep your eyes open to new developments and changes around you, you might capitalize on the emerging opportunities that arise. You don’t need to come up with an original and unique business idea to be successful, often, it’s the ideas that have been tested time and time again that prove to be successful, so look into your area, and see what is missing, it could be your next business.

5. Capitalize on your strengths
Most people are good at something. Look at your experiences and career, what is it that you can do well? Have you been working in project management for 15 years and know the ins and outs of the business, this is often the best place to start.

Most people are afraid to start their own business because they focus on the weaknesses and think that they will fail because of the things they cannot do well. No one is perfect, not every successful business owner is a superman.

Instead of focusing on the things you cannot do well, focus on the things you are good at. What can you do better than others? How are the others doing it? And how can you do it differently? Sometimes, you need a new idea to start a business, maybe a small change to an established idea is your answer. If your industry is behind other industries in the way it does business, maybe you can come up with a new system to automate their processes or to computerize their records.

Bottom line, look at the things you know best, and focus your thinking on these areas. They don’t necessarily need to be from your work life. You might discover that you are good at helping your friends sort their personal finances, so you might think about opening a business where you help individuals plan personal finances.

6. Explore new things
As mentioned earlier, change is one of the biggest stimulators to the brain. Even if you don’t want to open your own coffee shop, next time you’re in one, look at how things are done and think of new ways to improve it. Often this thinking might lead you to new ways to improve on your business ideas in your chosen field.

Strange enough, your next business idea might be something that never crossed your mind if you haven’t been to that business meeting out of town. The more you experience, the wider your options are, leaving you in a better position to generate new ideas and come up with new thinking.

7. Check your bank account
Starting and running your business requires money. Depending in your situation, you need to think of businesses that suit your budget. Everyone’s finances are limited, so make sure whatever business idea you come up with is doable.

If you have a small amount of money, then look into business ideas that are not cash hungry, maybe start small and then grow with the business.

Having that said, there are places where you can get finance for your business, like banks, venture capitals, family, friends and small business associations in your area. Work out in advance the level of finance you are able to raise, and focus on business that will not exceed those limits.

Another key point to consider here, while there are obvious benefits to getting outside financial help to start your own business, those will usually mean that you will have to share your business with others or be in debt. Think carefully about these options and decide in advance if these are risks you want to take or you want to do it completely on your own.

8. Know what you want in life
Aside from your business goals, think about the reasons you want to start the business in the first place. What is it that you are looking for? What are your goals in life? Are you starting a business to be able to spend more time with your family? To make more money? To be respected among your peers?

Whatever your goals are, make sure that your business idea complements these goals and help you achieve them. If your goal is to find more time to spend with your family and do other things, then starting a business that requires you to work 16 hours a day or travel constantly might not be the best idea.

More often than what people think, money is not the real reason most why most people start their business. While financial freedom is a big perk of having a successful business, any business can make money, the type of business and how you run your business will be dictated by things other than money alone.

9. Choose a business that suits your personality
Are you morning person or a night creature? Each person has his/her own peak hours of the day. You will find very few successful bakers or newspaper owners that don’t like to wake up in the morning. If you are not a morning person, avoid businesses that will need you to work in the early hours of the morning. If you are a night person, then maybe running a night club or a restaurant that stays open till late hours is more suitable for you. conversely, if you sleep early, running a business that requires you to stay late might not be suitable for you.

Are you an indoor or outdoor person? Do you like working in an office for long hours or can’t stand the office and feel that you need on the move all the time? If you like the office quiet environment, then pick a business that can be done from an office. If you like to be on the move, pick a business that requires you to go to different places and meet new people.

Are you brainy or handy person? People do things differently, some people like to do things that involve thinking and working their brains, other people like to do things that involve craftsmanship and handy work.

Are you a shy or outgoing person? If you are a shy person, then becoming a public speaker might not be the best idea for you. If you are an outgoing person and like to meet new people all the time, having an internet based business might deprive you from that joy.

I think you get the idea, think of your personal traits and attributes and pick a business idea that suits your personality.

10. Read about other people that started their own business
A large part becoming successful involves looking at other successful people and learning how they achieved their success. Reading autobiographies about prominent and successful business figures and learning how they started their journey will give you great insight on how they did things and what exactly they did to become successful.

You find that most of them started from nothing. Many of them failed in several businesses and had to listen to people that told them they will never be successful. But they stood up and tried again and again until they succeeded. It is not whether you fail that makes you the man you are, it is how you stand up after the fall.

Study their characters, what do successful have in common? How did they achieve their vision? What challenges did they have to overcome? Look for similarities between their stories and your situation right now. You will find that it is a great source of inspiration and motivation. If others just like you did it, then you can do it too.

I hope you found that this article have inspired you to start thinking about your next big idea! If you have any stories you would like to share about how you came up with your own business idea or any extra points you think the readers would like to know about, then please do comment below and share the knowledge.

Operating a successful business is largely about building and maintaining relationships. Sure, your customers are concerned about price, quality, service, etc., but the most successful businesses are those that work to develop a relationship with their customers. Look at Wal-Mart, for example. Do you really need someone handing you a shopping cart on your way in the store? No, but they always hire a nice, elderly type people who smile and says hello to you as you walk in. That’s relationship building!

Truth is people will often pay more for something if they have established some kind of personal connection with the person or persons within the business. Certainly, such relationships lead to repeat business, whether you run a grocery store, a restaurant, a sporting goods store, or a movie theater.

For most of us, it’s not often that we develop substantial relationships with people at the places we frequent. This is due to a number of reasons; maybe the store is large and has many employees and therefore you never really see the same people with each visit, sometimes it’s just a quick stop or perhaps you don’t visit all that frequently. But if you think about it, there are probably places you go often, where you have established some kind of relational bond with someone who works there. It’s that kind of familiarity that keeps bringing you back. And of course, not every place of business can develop an intimate relationship with every customer, but those that try are often more successful than those that don’t.

Building Business Relationships Online

While online businesses lack the ability to build relationships face-to-face, this does not negate the importance of building relationships with your customers–you just have to go about it a bit differently. In part, this is accomplished through your website itself, sometimes through email communications, and occasionally over the phone. Since the website is usually your first point of contact, and therefore the point where you establish your first impression, it’s vital that your website do all that it can to set the groundwork for building a strong relationship. The website can’t do everything for you, but if your visitors come and leave without ever having made even a superficial contact with a person or a persona worked into the site copy, they will leave without having established any sort of intimacy, and therefore no sense of “connection,” with you or your business.

I found the following quote the other day in regard to building relationships with people in a personal sense, but I felt it also applies to building relationships for business as well:

People are insecure; give them confidence.

People want to feel special; compliment them.

People desire a better tomorrow; show them hope.

People need to be understood; listen to them.

People are selfish; speak to their needs first.

People are emotionally low; encourage them.

People want to be associated with success; help them win.

–Pete Vossler

While all of the above are generalities, they do largely apply to most people, regardless of how successful, “important” or how well-known they are. And of course, it also applies to the average Joe and Jane Doe web surfer looking for a place where they feel comfortable handing over their money. So how do you go about building relationships with your potential customers online? Glad you asked.

People are Insecure; Give Them Confidence

It’s easy to buy from a brick and mortar store where you see real faces involved. Even if it’s some 16-year old kid, with numerous body-piercings standing behind the counter, you have confidence that when he takes your credit card he won’t be stealing the numbers. This kind of confidence in the buying process is lost online. My biggest issue with buying products online is the return process if, for whatever reason, something goes wrong. It’s easy to drive back to Target and return something you don’t want. But online, once the purchase is made, the return process is more cumbersome and often results in extra shipping fees.

You need to give your visitors confidence, not only in the security of the purchase process, but also in the quality of your products, their expectations and your policies and procedures in case something doesn’t go as expected. This is most easily accomplished through making sure you have pages on your site that address each of these issues, and clear and obvious links in the places where the customer will be most looking for them. For example, your product pages might need an obvious link to your return policies page–even if that link is already available through the main navigation.

People Want to Feel Special; Compliment Them

Who doesn’t want to feel special? A compliment goes a long, long way in helping to establish that mental relationship. How do you compliment someone you don’t know? Some simply ways are to write these compliments into your content, “You’re obviously looking for quality baby clothing, you’ve made a wise decision visiting our store.” It might sound a bit cheesy, but it works, as long as you don’t go overboard. These types of compliments can also be worked into your email and phone communications.

People Desire a Better Tomorrow; Show Them Hope

Will your products or services make their lives better or easier? You must already believe that otherwise you wouldn’t be selling what you do. So use this opportunity to explain how your products are going to be good for them. Explain how life will be better once your customer purchases what you are selling. Illustrate to them the benefits, not just the features. If you can give your customers hope–convince them–that your product or service will improve their lives; you’ve got a sale in hand without the cost being a significant factor.

People Need to be Understood; Listen to Them

Even before you have a chance to communicate with your clients verbally or via email, are you listening to their needs? Whether or not you listen to your website visitors can easily be determined by your USP, Unique Selling Proposition. What? You don’t have one? Then you may not be listening to your customers needs. Your USP is what makes you stand out from the thousands of other stores online peddling the same wares as you. Why should they buy from you as opposed to someone else? Price alone is rarely the determining factor.

You need to offer your visitors something unique that tells them that you have listened and responded to their needs. Even if you sell the same product or service as others, your unique approach is one developed out of conversations with your customers and seeking ways to find solutions to problems even before those problems existed.

People are Selfish; Speak to Their Needs First

More than anything, people want you to meet their wants and needs. They’re not shopping on your site for your benefit; they are there because they are in need of a solution for X. Your first order of business on your website is to tell the customers how you can meet those needs and what your products or services will achieve for them.

People are Emotionally Low; Encourage Them

For some sites, shopping cart abandonment is astronomically high. Why is that? Primarily because people need to be encouraged to proceed with their purchase. I’ll often start shopping for a book or DVD, have it in my basket, go through much of the checkout process, but just before I finalize the payment I hesitate. In my mind I’m thinking, “should I buy this now?”, or “Will my frivolous spending upset the wife?”, or for larger purchases, “Can I afford this?” Most of these questions surface on an emotional level; sometimes rooted in fact, sometimes not. The bottom line is that a little extra encouragement can help persuade visitors through the selling process.

In fact this very thing happened to me just the other day. I threw a couple of books into my Amazon shopping cart but since I’ve purchased quite a few books lately so I began to think twice about buying a couple more now. Amazon provided the encouragement I needed. By filling out an application for an Amazon Visa card I got something like $30 off my purchase. I was sold and so were the books. You don’t have to give away money to encourage your visitors to make a purchase, but you can re-iterate the benefits of their purchase one more time.

People Want to be Associated with Success; Help Them Win

Everybody wants to feel successful. The funny thing is that people don’t even have to be successful in the larger financial/business sense in order to feel successful in every day life. Success often comes from the little victories achieved here and there. Your product or service may not be able to change your customer’s destiny, but you can help him or her feel that their decision to purchase from you will help them be successful at something.

Selling baby diapers? Your diapers can successfully prevent leakage. Selling batteries? Your batteries can successfully start the car each morning. Selling cleaning supplies? Your supplies can help them successfully clean their house better. Let your visitors know what they will be successful at with their purchase.

The other side of this is that people also want to see that you are successful. Your success–or lack thereof–is inferred by how your website looks, the number of employees that work for your organization, or possibly even the number of clients you have. A business’ success is determined mostly by superficial perceptions. If visitors perceive that you are successful they will gravitate to you based on that alone. After all, you must obviously know what you’re doing if you can afford a great site, X number of employees, to charge outrageous fees, etc. But be careful here as well, success can often create a negative perception of you or your business. You might be considered too successful to be able to give them the time or quality your visitors expect.

If you are able to build strong relationships with your website visitors, even perceptually, this will give you a significant sales and marketing advantage over many of your competitors. Building these relationships alone won’t make your business the most successful in your industry–there are many other factors involved–but relationships are a crucial factor in being able to establish and maintain long-term customers. Every marketing dollar saved by not having to seek a replacement for a former customer that now shops elsewhere is an additional dollar (plus additional sales profits) that can be spent in obtaining and maintaining new customers.

Nowadays, there are dozens of digital signage solutions that you can use for your business. It has been said that digital solutions can help you interact with your customers, and it can produce better results compared to static banners. This article was written with the intention of helping you learn more about digital signage solutions, and the benefits that you and your business can get from it.

Here are the benefits that you and your business can get from using digital signage solutions:

Unlimited Space – one of the most prominent disadvantages of using static banners is that you are limited with the space within the banner itself. Digital signage solutions provide you with better storage, enabling you to show more information to your viewers. The visual content that digital solutions have are virtually unlimited, and you can use it to display different kinds of advertisements, notices, and other content that static banners can’t.

Easy Access – digital signage solutions make it easy for you to operate the whole system wherever you are. Unlike static banners that should be replaced manually, you can upload files, schedule, start and reboot the system, and monitor everything without even getting near the system itself.

Easy Set-up – with the help of the advanced signage solutions, even amateur users can produce professional digital displays with a few clicks of a button. The flexibility that the system offers is one of the main reasons why a lot of business owners prefer to have digital displays instead of sticking with the old static banner display.

Feed Viewers With More Information – since you are given with a virtually unlimited space, you can produce digital displays that can provide more information to your viewers. Unlike static displays, digital solutions allow you to display anything that your viewers need, making it more effective in terms of conversion and interaction.

Cost Effective – compared to static displays, digital signage solutions are far more cost effective. You can update and change the display wherever you are, and you don’t have to spend money on printing. You can keep your promotions up to date without the need for excessive manpower. On top of all these, digital solutions can adapt to your audience while providing better interaction.

These are some of the benefits that you can get from digital solutions. With the advancement of the things around us, businesses like the ones you are running should keep up with the changes. Aside from giving you more benefits, the results that digital signage solutions can produce are incomparable with static banner displays.